I AM THE LUNA QUEEN
went to sleep a nobody. I woke up a Queen.
One night I was just a broke, exhausted college girl. The next, I opened my eyes in silk sheets, with strangers bowing and calling me Luna Queen. The face in the mirror is mine. The body is mine. But the life isn't. The bruises on my wrists tell a story I don't remember, and the King I'm bound to doesn't love me-he loathes me.
They whisper that his mistress rules the palace. They say the Queen was weak. Silent. Broken. But that was before me.
Now I must survive a palace that wants me dead, a King whose touch burns as much as it scars, and a kingdom waiting for me to fail. The old Luna Queen bowed to cruelty.
I am not her.
And if this King thinks I'll kneel, he's about to learn what a true Queen is made of.
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Chapter 7
Hazel's POV
My palm stung from the slap, but the sound of it cracking across his face was the most satisfying thing I'd felt all day since waking up in this life.
His head snapped to the side. For one perfect second, the mighty King looked stunned-like he honestly couldn't believe someone had dared.
Then his expression twisted-rage, confusion, something dark-and he lunged again.
Absolutely not.
Before he could even blink, my knee shot up with perfect, furious accuracy.
My foot connected with his balls.
Hard.
The sound he made-dear God. It was half-gasp, half-death rattle. His entire body folded, and he dropped to the side of the bed like a fallen tree, clutching himself as a deep groan tore out of his throat.
Good.
Serves him right.
I scrambled backward, yanking the thick blanket up to my chin like it was armor. My chest was heaving, heart slamming against my ribs, skin still burning where his mouth had been. I hated that my body was shaking-and not just from anger.
He stayed on the floor for a second, curled on his side, breathing like he was dying. When he finally pushed himself up on one elbow, his face was white, eyes murderous.
I glared down at him. "Who the hell told you you have the right to touch me?" My voice cracked, but I didn't care. "You think you can just take whatever you want because you're the king?"
He dragged in a rough breath, jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth would shatter. When he spoke, it came out low and dangerous.
"You're my wife, Hazel."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. The sound burst out of me, sharp and bitter and a little crazy.
"Your wife?" I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand like I could erase him. "The wife you refused to touch for three damn years? The wife you let your mistress humiliate? That wife?"
I sat up straighter, clutching the blanket tighter. "And now-now-you suddenly decide you want inside my legs, and I'm supposed to just open them like a good little queen? You're even dumber than I thought."
He pushed to his feet slowly, like every movement hurt and it damn well should. My eyes betrayed me for half a second-sliding down before I could stop them.
Holy mother of-
He was huge.
Like...ruin-your-life huge. Thick, hard, and still half-ready even after I'd tried to rearrange his insides. The air left my lungs in a whoosh. Heat flooded my face, and lower, and I hated myself for it.
Snap out of it, Hazel.
Focus. You're angry. You're furious. You're putting him in his place.
Not staring at his...royal weapon.
I dragged my gaze back up to his face and poured every ounce of ice I had into my voice.
"Listen carefully, Mr. King," I said, slow and clear. "I don't know what's going on in that thick skull of yours tonight, but you will never touch me again. Ever."
His eyes flashed. He took one step closer, completely naked, completely shameless. "We have a duty. The kingdom expects an heir-"
"Then go make one with your mistress," I snapped, hopping off the bed with the blanket wrapped around me. "I hear she's your favorite. She's dying to give you babies, isn't she?"
His jaw ticked. A muscle jumped in his cheek. "What is wrong with you, Hazel? You've always wanted this. I saw it. Every time I touched Liora, I see the look in your eyes-"
"Oh shut up," I cut in."You're delusional. COMPLETELY delusional. You let your mistress bully your queen, mock her, parade around like she was the real queen. And now-because you suddenly feel bad, or horny, you think I'll just roll over and thank you?"
I laughed again, colder this time. "News flash, Your Majesty. This queen doesn't spread her legs for men who aren't worthy. And what just happened? That little mess you made?" I waved a hand between us. "It will NEVER happen again. Ever."
Something in his eyes shifted-hurt? Rage? Shock? I didn't care.
He grabbed my wrist so fast I didn't have time to jerk away. His grip was iron.
"Everyone expects us to consummate this marriage tonight." He growled. "What am I supposed to tell them tomorrow when there's no blood on the sheets?"
I smiled, slow and mean.
Then I yanked my hand out of his grip.
"Tell them the king wasn't good enough."
His entire body froze.
"... Pardon?"
"You heard me." I shrugged casually, though my heart was pounding with adrenaline. "Tell them you couldn't get it up. Or you finished in ten seconds. Or-my favorite-that you've been sleeping with your mistress so long, you've got performance issues with your actual wife. Who knows? Maybe you might have low sperm count."
He eyes widened in pure horror.
"Have you lost your damn mind?"
I yawned-huge, dramatic, fake as hell. "I've had one hell of a day. Or nightmare. Whatever this is. I'm tired, and I need sleep. So good night, Mr. King."
I turned to climb onto the bed, but his hand shot out and grabbed my arm, spinning me back to face him.
"We are consummating this marriage," he snarled.
I looked down at his hand on my arm, then up at him, sweet as sugar. "You only get what you deserve. And you? You've earned NOTHING from me."
His jaw flexed, muscles ticking.
"If you're that desperate to get laid, go to your mistress. I'm sure she's waiting with her legs already open."
I yanked free, climbed under the blankets, and pulled them up to my chin. He stood there, breathing hard, staring at me like he didn't recognize me.
After a long, furious silence, he turned toward the bed.
I sat up suddenly. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
He threw me a cold look over his shoulder. "Going to bed."
"Hell no." I pointed across the room. "You're sleeping on that couch."
He raised an eyebrow. "This is my room."
I smiled, all teeth. "Then I'll walk downstairs right now-in this blanket-and tell everyone how bad you were. How you couldn't even last long enough to make it interesting. How I got bored."
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. His eyes went absolutely arctic.
Without a word, he grabbed a pillow off the bed, stalked to the fancy couch on the far side of the room, and threw himself onto it like it had personally offended him.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
The couch was small compared to his frame. His legs hung off the end, one arm draped over his face, the other clenched into a fist. He looked ridiculously uncomfortable, anger rolling off him in waves I could feel from here.
I couldn't resist.
I let out the most satisfied, over-the-top sigh I could muster, stretched like a cat, and sang, "Good night, Mr. King. Sweet dreams."
The only answer was a low, furious growl from the couch.
I grinned into the dark.
This might not be my life.
But damn, I was having fun ruining his.
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9.6
In the two years after I married Daniel Carter, my private photos had gone viral nine times, and Daniel had been taken into custody ten times.
Because every time his mistress, Emily Morgan, was unhappy, she would leak my private photos all over the internet.
I, Claire Parker, never let it slide. I reported every shady business Daniel was involved in and personally sent him behind bars.
That lasted until an unexpected kidnapping. I took a bullet for him, one aimed straight at his heart, and he shielded me beneath his body, taking the brunt of the explosion for me.
After we survived, the man who had always been so cold-blooded knelt before me, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.
"Honey, let's leave the drama behind. I just want a peaceful life with you."
Right in front of me, he ordered his men to send his mistress out of Northhaven and never let her appear before him again.
In the third year after we reconciled, I carried my eight-month pregnant belly and brought him lunch.
But on the way there, I was hit by a car. The hospital issued three critical condition notices, yet they still could not save the baby.
Daniel rushed over, but he did not even spare me a glance. Instead, he pulled the woman who had hit me and her child into his arms, soothing her in a low voice.
"Don't be scared. I'll protect you and the child."
Only then did I realize that the woman who had hit me was the very mistress he had sent away three years ago.
When I demanded an explanation, Daniel brushed it off as if it were nothing. "She didn't do it on purpose. Don't take it out on her and her son. You can have a baby another time."
At that moment, I finally understood. They had gotten back together long ago.
I looked at him and nodded. "Don't worry, this will never happen again."
7.9
Rose was so naive that she didn't know Jonah, her ex-fiancé, was cheating on her even before her wedding day. On the night before her wedding, she caught him cheating on her with the last person she would ever expect him to be with, Rebecca.
Out of anger and spite, she cursed at them and left, then went and got herself drunk and made out with a mafia don, who, oblivious to her, was her fiancé's stepbrother and his boss.
On the day of the wedding, she stormed in and canceled it, calling Jonah out. After the embarrassment, Jonah vowed to make her life miserable. She tried to get a job, but it was almost impossible because of the influence Jonah had.
So she went to the greatest mafia don that her friend Lucy recommended to her. When she went to ask for his help, the don turned out to be the mysterious man who had been showing interest in her, but she had kept declining. Unbeknownst to her, he was her ex-fiancé's boss and stepbrother.
She asked for his help, and he offered it, of course, but on one condition.that she would be his mistress !.
7.5
I was the adopted daughter of the wealthy Ruiz family, but the moment their true heir appeared, I was thrown away like trash.
Not long after being kicked out, my adoptive father and uncle hired a hitman to stage a fatal car crash on Mulholland Drive.
Pinned under an overturned Porsche with a shattered leg, I watched the hitman point a suppressed pistol between my eyes.
"The Ruiz family sends their regards."
Before this, my reputation had already been completely destroyed by a director, a pop idol, and a reality TV star, leaving me blacklisted and universally hated.
My adoptive family didn't just want me ruined; they wanted me permanently silenced to tie up loose ends.
The hitman pulled the trigger, and the original Alicia died in despair, tasting only rain and blood.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand.
Why did the family she loved treat her like a disposable object? Why did those three men maliciously frame her and turn the world against her?
Opening my eyes again, the fear was gone, replaced by an ancient, cosmic indifference.
I, the Arbiter, had taken over this deceased vessel.
Moving faster than the human eye, I crushed the hitman's steel gun with my bare hand and turned his soul into dust.
Looking at the memories of those who wronged this girl, I signed a contract for the very reality show they were starring in.
Since I borrowed this body, taking out the trash is a required courtesy.
8.7
I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape-the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.
9.7
Blurb: She signed the divorce papers. He never signed away his obsession.
Veronica Stanford was the perfect wife-devoted, patient, and hopelessly in love. But when her billionaire husband, Jason Harper, trades her in for her treacherous best friend, Rhea, Veronica's world shatters. Broken and betrayed, she drowns her sorrows in a bar, only to be saved by a dangerously alluring stranger with emerald-green eyes and a lethal reputation: Monte "Four" Zagcanni, the ruthless heir to a mafia empire.
Four is everything Jason isn't-dark, dangerous, and devastatingly protective. When Veronica discovers she's pregnant with Jason's child, she strikes a deal with Four: a fake marriage to shield her from scandal. But what starts as a cold arrangement ignites into a passion neither can resist.
Jason, realizing his mistake too late, wants Veronica back-along with the son he never knew existed. But Four isn't a man who surrenders what's his. And Veronica? She's done being the meek wife.
Betrayal runs deep. Revenge burns hotter.
As secrets unravel-her father's bloody past, Rhea's twisted obsession, and Jason's deadly lies-Veronica must decide: trust the man who destroyed her once, or surrender to the devil who might destroy her forever.
One wants her back. The other wants her forever.
7.6
Top DEA agent Kaitlynn Bruce woke up to a heavy, chemical lethargy, only to realize she was trapped in the body of a weak, abused war widow.
Before she could even process her new reality, she heard her sister-in-law counting cash, selling her unconscious body to a local thug for a measly two hundred dollars.
The thug dragged her new seven-year-old son, Cason, into the bedroom.
"Mommy!"
When the boy reached out, the man brutally kicked his small body into a wooden doorframe, leaving him gasping and bleeding on the floor.
Memories flooded Kaitlynn's mind. Her predecessor was a pathetic doormat whose husband's military pension had been bled dry by these greedy in-laws, leaving her children to starve and suffer endless abuse.
But as Kaitlynn looked at the bleeding boy's dark, unnervingly alert eyes, a chilling piece of DEA intelligence clicked in her mind.
Cason Richmond.
The name, the town, the abusive aunt—it all matched the classified files of the "Director of the Hive," the most ruthless and feared cartel puppet master in the criminal underworld.
How could this battered, starving child be destined to become the ultimate monster she used to hunt?
The original widow's tragic death was supposed to be the catalyst that pushed this boy into total darkness.
But Kaitlynn Bruce was not a victim.
Adrenaline burning through the drugs, she cracked the thug's neck with a brass lamp and choked the sister-in-law against the wall.
Looking down at the boy who was supposed to become a global nightmare, she made a vow. She was going to rewrite his script, even if she had to burn the whole world down to do it.